Clandestine
by atthetopoflungs
Summary: New author's note above chapter 1. Read it, it's important.
1. Blood & Pop Tarts

Oh em gee NEWSFLASH! I have no other place to put this.

Okay, within the last 6 months my subscription to Showtime has been cut, and so my knowledge of what's been going on with the series stops at the Bicycle Theif episode. I plan to pick up the DVD sets once I have the money and the time to find it, but until then my knowledge is very limited.

The response to Molly has been mixed, so I don't really know what to do with her. I'd like to take this opportunity to point out for the ump-teenth time that I imagined Molly to be a freshman in high school. 15. That's illegal in most countries, I think, seeing as how Mason's --what?-- 64? Plus, for all I know the whole explanation behind the "pet reaper" thing might already be squared away, which would suck really bad because that's the only reason I started up Molly in the first place, so I could explore that myself.

So sorry for my slowness, and thank you for all the comments. I'll try to pick up the slack once I have a better idea of where these crazy undead kids are going with themselves.

Love SA23

* * *

10:30. Sunday morning. The sun rose over a vacated old house, gilding its mildewed panes and chipped paint. The old woman who had once lived there died about a month ago, and she had no family to come and claim her house after her death. So it was empty. Well, it was _supposed_ to be empty...

Upstairs, a young English man rolled out of bed, hitting the floor with a hollow thud. He was the last person the old woman saw before she died; that's because he was the one that came to take her soul. (It was nothing personal--it was just his job.) He was what was called a Grim Reaper, but he didn't fit the normal reaper stereotype of a faceless creature, with skeletal hands, a scythe, and a black hooded cloak. In fact, he even had a name. It was Mason.

He rubbed the shoulder that he fell on, grunting and rising from the floor. Looking to his bureau, he glanced at the bottle of whiskey that sat on next to his alarm clock. "Morning, Mr. Daniels," he mumbled to it as he looked to his alarm clock: it flashed _**5:47**_ repetitively. _Bloody hell?_ he thought. _That can't be right._ He walked over to it and hit it squarely with the side of his fist. The display reeled briefly before weakly sputtering **_10:32_** in dim green numerals. He was too groggy to feel satisfied with himself, so he just lumbered to the bathroom in his half-awake fog.

He shook the can of shaving cream. _Dammit._ Empty, he thought. He grumbled some choice words under his breath as he wet his razor under the tap. As he shaved, it seemed that he cut himself every other inch of his face. _Good thing reapers heal fast,_ he thought to himself as he muttered aloud in a sort of pseudo rhythm, "OW! Fuck... OW! Fuck..." He hastily buried his face in a towel and wiped off as much water as he could. He looked down at the towel, half of him expecting to see blood, the other half knowing that there wouldn't be any. He had been undead since for 38 years, and in all that time he never humanly bled. Of all possible things, one of the things he missed most about being alive was bleeding. He quietly looked back up to the mirror, watching as a few wet soap suds slid down the sides of his face. _I look pretty good for 63,_ he thought halfheartedly. He sighed, and headed to the kitchen.

He kicked the refrigerator door open as he started the coffee maker and flipped on the light above the sink, which cast a flickering blue glow over the stained vinyl tiles that made up the floor. He put his hands on his knees as he surveyed the contents of his refrigerator: some ketchup, a near-empty carton of milk, a couple cans of beer, some now furry-looking old eggs left over from Der Waffelhous, and some stray AAA batteries. _I'll just purloin food from the 7-11 next chance I can,_ he thought. He stood up straight and pulled the freezer door open; nothing but ice cubes and a frozen Pop-Tart. He shrugged to himself and pulled out a pastry from its foil pouch, inspecting it. _It's a serving of fruit, I guess,_ he thought to himself as he sunk his teeth into a corner and shut the fridge doors. He tried to clamp his jaws together, but found that his meal wouldn't give. He tugged at the Pop Tart with his teeth, accompanying this action with a pulling motion from his arm, but to no avail. He finally yanked his teeth out of the Pop Tart and looked to it with disdain. The corner simply had a dry, shallow imprint of his incisors where he had tried to tear a bit off; it was like chewing on a strip of tire--a delicious, fruit-filled, sugar-frosted strip of tire, but a strip of tire nonetheless.

"I need to get some Hot Pockets... or something," he said to himself as he tried to snap the piece off with his fingers. Looking around his kitchen at his bare counters, he muttered as an afterthought, "I need to fix these appliances." Deciding to forgo the Pop Tart for a while, he tossed it onto his counter and walked to his window, gazing out at the empty lot next door. He thought aloud, "I need to buy some hot plates, I need to get a job, I need to buy some more beer--"

He was pulled out of his catatonia by an unexpected voice coming from his living room. "Mason? Who are you talking to?" Mason spun around to find a familiar face in his kitchen doorway.

"Toilet Seat! How'd you get in?"

She rolled her eyes at the nickname and jerked her thumb towards the front door and said, "The front was unlocked."

"FUCK!" Mason groaned as he rushed past her.

George seemed a little startled. "You mean you didn't know?"

He ignored her as he stuck his head out his door and glanced around his porch, not sure of what he was looking for. "Did anything get stolen?"

George walked into the living room, extending her arm and supporting herself against the couch. "What does it matter? It's not _your_ stuff anyway."

Mason pulled his head in and let this new thought sink in. He shrugged. "True." George smirked faintly, knowing she was right. Mason wasn't really sure what to say to her about her barging in the way she had, so he ineffectually stumbled over his words. "Well--I mean, you--what--I didn't--I mean--"

George looked at him quizzically. "Are you having a stroke?"

"No, no, I mean--what are you doing here at this ungodly hour anyway?"

"'Ungodly hour'? Mason, it's quarter 'til eleven." Mason flashed back briefly to when he'd whacked his alarm clock. **_10:32_**, it had read, once it was fixed. _Dammit,_ he thought. He'd forgotten how late it was already. He was sixty-three years old technically, so he figured it was pre-Alzheimer's or something. George continued. "Anyway, Roxy said you had a _house_, and since I don't even have a measly _apartment_ yet, she suggested I come here. You know, crash on your couch or something."

"You don't have your own place yet?"

"Nope."

"Don't you have a job?"

"Not anymore."

"But you _did_ have a job when you were creamed by the flaming latrine, right?"

She scoffed. "I was in _filing_ at Happy Time. Herbig hated me on sight, so she banished me to the dark corners of the Happy Time basement."

Mason chuckled. "Set a good first impression, did you?"

She said with a shrug, "It's one of my many talents. No one can resist my _girlish charms._" She pursed her lips and made a childish face.

"And since we're on the topic of 'girlish charms', _Roxy_ suggested you come here? Why didn't you just crash at _her_ place?"

"Because she scares me shitless," she said very matter-of-factly.

Mason shrugged, "Well, yeah," as he started for the kitchen again. "Anyway, this old bird had a guest bedroom upstairs, albeit the fact that she had no family, so I guess you could put your stuff up there." George nodded, and hesitantly turned for the stairs. As she disappeared through the kitchen doorway, Mason sighed, shoving his fingers into his hairline and turning back to the counter. He had no idea how he was supposed to feed the both of them for as long as she was going to be there, since he had trouble feeding just himself. He could split any food he found evenly between the two of them, to be a gentleman, or he could eat whatever he could find, as it was his house, and leave her to fend for herself. _Every man for himself, right? Yes, that's what I'll do. I **won't** waver for her 'girlish charms' either._

The thought of food suddenly drew his mind away from her, at least for a short while, because he remembered his uneaten breakfast. _My rock-hard toaster pastry. Right, _he thought. As he picked up his now semi--thawed breakfast from the counter, he heard the floor squeak under George's feet as she came downstairs. She smiled fleetingly, almost awkwardly, at him. _Cute smile,_ he thought for a moment, before shaking himself mentally. He couldn't think about her like that. It'd be too... weird.

She timidly looked around his unkempt house for a moment before turning back towards the staircase. "Maybe I should--um--you know--unpack some of my stuff--"

"Wait," he called after her. She shot a glance at him over her shoulder, stopping in mid-stride. He cleared his throat, snapping off an even half of his breakfast and extending it to her. He smiled weakly; "Toaster pastry?"


	2. Potential

George hadn't brought much with her. In fact, Mason felt she brought too little. She had some changes of day clothes, a single pair of shoes, some underwear, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush.

"Where'd you get the clothes from," he asked as he sunk his teeth into his Pop-Tart (which was still frozen towards the center). She smirked, both proud and embarrassed for herself.

"I broke into my parents' house and stole them." Mason laughed out loud.

"A girl after my own heart," he said with a smile. It dimmed a little when he realized how that expression was slightly inappropriate. "By the way, I didn't mean that like it sounded." He could feel his ears coloring. Now it was George's turn to laugh.

"Whatever. Anyway, I sort of knew that it'd make you proud as I was stealing from my own parents." He shrugged.

"Rotten thing to do really, stealing from your folks," he said, gazing absently at the wall and pushing sprinkles off his pastry with his thumb. "Not to say I didn't do it myself before my parents bit it. And even before _I_ bit it."

"Little kleptomaniac, you were?"

"Little what now?"

"Kleptomaniac. You know, someone who steals compulsively?" Mason wrinkled his nose as he gnawed at his breakfast.

"Oh, don't use big words, they make my head hurt."

She rolled her eyes. "Just what the world needs. Another genius."

Mason smiled a little, stretching his arms out and yawning. As he did this, he looked down to his feet. He looked back at George from under hooded eyelids and grunted nonchalantly, "It obviously didn't bother you that I didn't put any pants on after I woke up." George shrugged.

"Um... I was so shocked that I forgot to say anything...?"

"Didn't mean to frighten you, darling. I'll go change," he said as he turned to the door.

"You don't have to," she called after him. "I mean, there's nothing about it that's particularly, you know, _distracting_."

He stopped into the door, turning back to her and saying with fake sincerity, "No, no. One can only handle so much of the sight of my man-bits at once. And what's more, I'm going to _have_ to put them on eventually," he said as he headed towards the stairs.

"Why's that?"

He barely placed his foot on the first step as he said, "Can't be walking into Der fucking Wafflehous without any knickers now, can I?"

He felt her firm grasp on his wrist suddenly. "Wait," she said, tugging him back to the floor. "We have to meet up on a _Sunday?_ In the condition you're in, I'd thought we had Sundays off."

"We just had this particular Sunday morning off, you and I. We have to show up for lunch. Besides, people still die on Sunday." He gently tugged his wrist away, and she just stood dumbstruck at the bottom of the stairs as he headed towards his room. 

"Un-fucking-real!" she groaned as she turned back to the kitchen. Mason smiled to himself; she was rather lovely when she was angry. 

It was now that he knew she'd prove to be an interesting roommate.

* * *

They slid into their normal booth at Der Waffelhous, taking either side of the table. 

"Oh, I see you _did_ take my advice," Roxy said to George as she and Mason walked in together. She beamed, mostly at herself, and went back to her hashbrowns.

"Good morning, my little spots of sunshine," Rube said dryly as he pulled the rubber band off his planner. "Lovely day for Reaping souls." He licked his thumb, picked up a yellow Post-It note, and slapped it in front of George.

"Shut up, old man," Mason grunted as his Post-It was slapped in front of him.

"Oh, but _Mason_, he's right," Daisy said with acerbic sweetness. "I find that the smell of death hangs nicely in the air this morning." Mason wasn't sure if this was meant to put him or Rube down. Or both of them.

("Suck up," Roxy muttered.)

Rube didn't seem sure either. Mason glanced down at his Post-It and grumbled. "This is the hospital, right?"

"Yes," George said without hesitation. Rube and Mason both looked surprised. George's shoulders tensed. "What?! My assignment's there too. " Rube waved his hand dismissively.

"Nevermind. Anyway, hospitals are always crowded. And bustling."

A sneer wrinkled Mason's nose. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

He gave Mason a shove, urging him out of his seat. "It'll take you forever to find your Reap, so you'd better get moving. Go on, scram."

"But we just got here! And I'm starving," Mason whined. "Hell knows how long you've all been here, why are _your_ assignments later?!"

"Mine's in fifteen minutes," Daisy said, smiling.

"Oh, so you'll come with us then?"

"No." She pointed towards the other end of the restaurant. "He's sitting over there." Mason rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come on, Rube. Can't I trade with Roxy or something?" Roxy quirked a brow at him.

"No trading," Rube grunted from behind his crossword puzzle.

"I can't believe this!" Mason squeaked. "I mean, I had half of a frozen toaster pastry for breakfast, I'm sitting here in my usual drunken fog, and I--"

"Mason," George said in a sing-song voice over Mason's ranting.

"I am _not_ about to go picking through droves of doctors and sick people to--"

"_Mason,_" George called, with a little more volume.

"If you expect me to do this you should at least allot me some fucking time to have a proper breakfast--"

"MASON!" George said, leaning forward in her seat. He stopped, looking up at her. She reached forward and stroked his arm reassuringly. "It's _okay,_ Mason. I'll go with you. It's not a big deal, you can do this." And she pinned on a sugary grin. Roxy chuckled at the childish tactics needed to calm the likes of Mason. He drummed on the table.

"Alright... fine." George nodded, satisfied with herself, and gestured to the door.

"Age before beauty, Mason." He nodded briskly.

"Yeah." He slid out of the seat and started towards the door. George rolled her eyes and followed him.

"If I'm not back by--" (she looked down to her Post-It,) "quarter till 11, order me a ham and cheese omelette, okay?" she said, looking pointedly to the three who remained at the table. Daisy nodded, as if to say "Whatever." George broke into a light jog after Mason, catching up with him at the door.

Daisy shook her head as she watched Mason and stirred her tea. "I worry about that boy sometimes."

* * *

"Right," Mason said as they walked in through the hospital doors. He looked around, at all the activity, all the heads rushing past. "Who's your Reap?" he said to George. She glanced down at her Post-It. "G. Warrick. 10:24." Mason looked at his.

"Mine's T. Nguyen, 10:24."

"Uh oh," George said. "Once you Reap yours, you should clear."

"Oh, relax. If this accident involved more than two people, there'd be more Reapers."

"But what if there are Reapers employed at the hospital?"

"Oh, codswallop. How could there be Reapers that we don't know about?"

George shrugged. "It probably is going to take forever to find our Reaps, so we'd better split up."

Mason nodded. "Aye. Good luck."

"You too." And with that they separated. Mason looked around. Too lazy and hung over to use logic, he turned to a nurse. "Excuse me, you don't happen to be T. Nguyen, do you?" The nurse passed him by frostily. "Oh, that's real nice. Thank you," he groaned sarcastically. He bent down and asked a man in a wheelchair who was being pushed towards the front. "Have you seen a T. Nguyen? Yes? No? Maybe?" Still nothing, and the wheelchair rushed past him. He looked up above the crowd, hopping a little from his knees. "T. Nguyen?! T. Nguyen, where _are_ you?! **_T. Nguyen?!_**" He poked his head through the door of a patient's room. "Is T. Nguyen in here? No?" He did the same to the patients next door, and the patients thereafter. He grabbed a janitor by the arm, "Pardon me, do you happen to know a T. Nguyen?"

The janitor shook his head. "No English." Mason clapped a hand to his forehead and watched as new people entered the room and more people left.

"Oh, bollocks," he sighed. "Someone's going to die alone."

He looked down at his watch. _10:19. Wonder if George's found hers._ "George?!" he called out. "Georgia!" He looked anxiously around the room. "GEORGI--" He stopped, finally spotting her standing at the window of the maternity ward, looking in. She showed no signs of having heard him at all. He jogged towards her, weaving in and out of all the people around him that seemed to appear out of nowhere. "George, there you are. I was almost worried." She didn't say anything, just looked thoughtfully through the glass at all the newborn flesh. He craned his neck to look at her face, see if she was still awake, which she was. In comparison to the state of panic he was in, she seemed oddly thoughtful and placid. "George?"

"Don't you ever stop and... think about it, Mason?" she said, turning to him slightly. He looked askance at her.

"Think about what?"

"How old Reapers really are. I've tried talking Rube and Roxy and Daisy about it, but they think I'm crazy. You probably will too, but I mean, Roxy and I are two decades apart, you and I are _four_ decades apart, Rube's older than dirt... And then look in there," she said, softly tapping the window, where all the pink, crying infants lay. "I mean, any one of them could become a lawyer or a teacher, or maybe even an OB-GYN and deliver other little pink things like the ones they are now." At this Mason smiled quietly. "_Or,_" she continued, "in twenty-something years one may fall off a cliff, or get strangled by a sock, or drill a hole in his head, or get incinerated by a flaming crapper, and become a Reaper. One of our future co-workers might be in _there_. In those little cribs. And they'll be condemned, like us, to lose their identities and stand still in time, taking the souls of the rest of humankind. The possibilities are just... _staggering._"

Mason shrugged. "Yeah... All that... _potential._"

"Exactly," she said, turning to him. But she broke off, a faint smile reluctantly crossing her lips. She had this indescribably distant look in her eyes, as if she was looking right through him, like he was the only person she could relate to in the whole, wide world.

She turned her face away from him, seemingly a little embarrassed, and looked back into the maternity ward. Mason wanted her to look at him like that again, to pierce him with her gaze. He also wanted to shake himself of thoughts like that, but he didn't feel any sense of urgency about it.

But his daydreams were interrupted by a voice behind them.

"Excuse me," the voice said. They spun around to find a nurse looking up at them. She was a little shorter than George, and while she wasn't particularly attractive, she still held a mild sense of authority over them. "Can I help you two?" George and Mason stood stock still; they hadn't thought of an excuse for being there. Before they could jog their minds for one, the nurse nodded pointedly to the glass behind them. "One of them belong to you?"

Mason's mouth silently opened and shut as he fumbled for words, making him look like a rather stupid fish. He choked out through his cracking voice (because his voice always cracked when he was nervous), "Er, yes. Um--cute little buggers, aren't they?" He nervously looked back to the glass. But then the nurse turned to George, and tilted her head to the side.

"Odd. You don't _look_ like you just had a baby."

"Oh," George said, rolling her eyes as she thought. "I had a cesarean--um--birth." The nurse still looked skeptical. "And he was premature," she hastily added. She sighed, "We're just coming to visit. You know, check up on him." The nurse nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. George stole a furtive glance of her Post-It, mostly eyeing the ETD. She tugged Mason's sleeve gently and said as here eyes absently scanned the room, "I'm going to... find a bathroom. I'll catch up with you later." As she brushed past him, she whispered, "The tigress zeroes in on her kill." She hurriedly passed the nurse, and disappeared into the bustle.

Mason looked after her as she left. Wanting to avoid any conversing or further inquiry from the nurse, Mason also rushed past her, saying, "I probably should... get the car." He felt a slight sense of relief as she fell out of his field of vision, but he could feel her eyes on his back.

"Wait," she said. Mason turned and looked over his shoulder at her. She extended her hand, holding a small Post-It note between her fingers. "You dropped this." As she spoke, she glanced over the writing. _The nerve!_ Mason thought. _I mean, think of all the things it **could've** said._

He could see her lips discreetly mouth 'ETD 1:24'. As he took the Post-It from her, her eyes searched mysteriously around the room. Mason was about to turn away, when she pointed to the reception counter, at a tall, young Asian man. "That's Dr. Tom Nguyen. Just graduated from USC with honors and transferred here from Cedar Sinai, in California." Mason was unsure that he was hearing her right, and slowly turned back to her. She shrugged as she glanced down at the Post-It in Mason's hand. "That's a shame. Oh well." She pushed her sleeve up and looked at her watch. "You'd better hurry. It's 1:22." And with that she turned and walked determinedly in the other direction.

"Wait a minute," Mason called after her. "Where are you going?" She didn't say anything, didn't even look back, but reached into her pocket and held up a simple yellow Post-It.

He felt some dust from the ceiling fall onto his face; he looked up, only to see a Graveling looking ahead at T. Nguyen, with a glint of mischief in its eye. It licked its dry lips, the spines on its back bristled, and it pounced off the ceiling with the intent of flying at the doctor. Mason swung his arm up and knocked it out of the air, like a serve to a volleyball, and it flew across the room and smashed into a nearby wall. "I haven't taken his soul yet, cocksucker," he shouted to it. It rubbed its head with disdain and contemptuously growled at him. Mason ignored the various suspecting glances as he slid through the hordes of people between him and the front desk. When he arrived at the counter, he reached over and brushed his hand over T. Nguyen's shoulder. "Excuse me..." he said uncertainly. The familiar white rush of light surged through his arm as he turned around.

"Yes?" Mason inwardly slapped himself in the forehead again. He fumbled for an excuse.

"Yes, I'm looking for a Doctor... um... Doctor...." he glanced sideways, spotting George as she was taking her Reap. "Dr. George Lass," he finished. T. Nguyen frowned, as he jogged his memory.

"I'm sorry, I'm not aware of a Dr. Lass. And besides, I'm new." Mason nodded in silent thanks. T. Nguyen smiled faintly as he pointed to Mason's face with his clipboard. "Come to see him about your eyes?"

Mason scowled. "What's wrong with my eyes?!" he demanded. T. Nguyen jerked back in surprise.

"Oh--I just thought they looked a little pink, and that--"

Mason waved his hand and laughed, "No, that's just cannabis." He laughed alone until he noticed T. Nguyen looking at him skeptically; then he was quiet. He looked up, and recognized George's Reap walking towards the counter. Not a good sign.

"I've--got to go..." he said as he turned and ran for the front door. T. Nguyen called after him. "Wait! What about your meeting with Dr. Lass?!"

Mason turned and shouted back at him through his cracking voice, "I can't. Er--the Pope might drop by."

The doors automatically slid as he approached them, but he turned around at the sound of a Graveling's raspy snarl, and looked on as an old air conditioning unit above the desk came dislodged from the roof, crushing a young doctor and a young med student under its weight. There was screaming, and general chaos ensued. He sighed.

"All that potential," he muttered to himself. But he heard George's voice from outside the open door.

"Hey!" He turned. "Are you coming? I haven't had lunch yet, I'm starving!" Mason jogged out to meet her, not looking back.

"Where'd do you want to eat?"

"Well, Rube dictates that we're _always_ in the mood for waffles."

"Right." They quietly, leisurely strolled through the parking lot as various people heard the commotion inside and ran in to see the mess for themselves. Mason finally cleared his throat, "George, is there something noticeably wrong with my eyes?" She didn't even have to look at him.

"They're a bit pink. And puffy. Especially this time of day. Why?" Mason shrugged.

"Just wondering."


	3. A Two Post It Day

"So... seen any interesting deaths lately?" Mason chuckled; it was a commonplace conversation starter for Reapers--either that or 'How about them Lakers?'

"Why yes; just last year I saw a young girl get absolutely creamed by a flaming toilet seat."

George rolled her eyes. "I never _will_ live that down, will I?"

"You're dead, how can you _live_ something down?"

"Well, I can't _die_ it down, can I?"

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."

She glanced sideways at him. "Have you been drinking again?"

He had. "No," he said, shaking his head convulsively. "Of course not."

As they reached the corner of the city block, George turned down the alley as Mason crossed the street. "Where are you going, love?"

She walked backwards and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb, "I've got two Post-Its."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Rube just said it was a two Post-It day," she called over her shoulder as she ran off. "I'm running behind, see you." Mason watched as she disappeared around a corner, and stood at the corner for a while. He folded his arms across his chest, feeling the all too familiar lump in his breast pocket. He tapped it, making a tinny hollow sound, but a little bit of whiskey sloshed around inside. He looked up the hill to the cemetery, which sat in the middle of the town, nestled in a crown of greenery. He tapped his whiskey flask again and started walking resolutely up the sloped avenue.

He strode a ways into the green, and leaned against a gravestone, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his small tin flask.

"'It's what the Lord wants, Mason,'" he said, mocking Daisy as he took his first nip. Then he deepened his voice and grunted, "'It'll do you good, kid,'" imitating Rube. He chuckled to himself as he took another sip. There were a number of things he had liked about being sober--but not as many as the things he liked about being drunk.

A great deal of the headstones he had seen were bare and rather lonesome-looking, like they were totally forgotten by all the world. Sadly, Mason knew all to well what that felt like. At the thought, he took another nip. He half-gasped, half-grunted, "Back to the old drawing board." He looked back up, and saw one short, plain gravestone in the middle of all the old decaying ones. As opposed to brownish-yellow grass going growing unkempt around the stone, the grass on this one was fresh, and green. Recently buried. And above that, there were flowers laid across, and a small photo frame, though he couldn't tell what was in it from where he was. He wondered if anybody laid flowers on his grave; he seriously doubted it.

He unsteadily rose and hobbled over to it, looking down at the flowers, and then reading the inscription.

**GEORGIA L. LASS**

Then he bent down to look at the picture. It was a photo of Georgia and her younger sister, standing by a lake, both smiling. He remembered the picture from when all the Reapers visited George's grave, and she swiped it. This was obviously meant to replace the old one, because it was a different frame and there was no message from her sister written on it. _Her sister must have negatives, who's to say that she'll miss this one?_ He picked it up, looking at it closer. George looked so happy; it was so unlike her. It seemed almost unnatural.

He looked around, as if crossing a street, to make sure there were no mourners, George's and otherwise. There was no one in sight, other than a Graveling that was sharpening its claws on a headstone. It reminded Mason of a cat scratching up the arm of a couch, only less endearing. Mason shrugged and slid the photo into his jacket pocket. He looked back to the Graveling, who was smirking oddly at him; Mason thought it as what would be a cynical and questioning smirk if the graveling didn't have the logic of a 5 year-old.

"Don't tell anyone," Mason said, nodding pointedly at it.

It looked suddenly shocked that it was being addressed directly, and it scampered away, weaving in and out between headstones before disappearing in a black whirl of dust.

* * *

Mason tentatively opened his front door, being mindful of the rusted hinge and the squeaky floorboards on the porch. He looked around, keeping his ear out for his roommate; she wasn't around. He swung the door open the rest of the way, and it groaned and squealed in protest. "Thank God for 'two Post-It days'."

Mason bounded up the stairs and into his room, looking at his unadorned bureau, with just his alarm clock and his bottle of Jack Daniels staring back at him. He placed the picture on his barren bedside table, deciding it belonged there. Nodding to himself, he threw on his jacket and headed back downstairs, and then outside.

* * *

"Hello," he said, standing at the foot of the table and looking down at Rube. Rube looked up at him, surprised.

"You're early," he said, looking around for his planner.

"I am?"

"The rest of the gang isn't due here for another hour. What brings you here so unusually on time? Is it that you're sober?"

"I don't know. Can I have my Post-It?" Rube peeled two Post-Its off the top of his neatly stacked pile. "It's a two Post-It day?" Mason said teasingly, remembering what George had said.

"They're easy ones," Rube said simply. "And they're not for another three hours," he said, holding the stack of two for him to see. When Mason reached for them, Rube tugged them away, like they were a steak and Mason was a dog. "Won't you stay, and enjoy a waffle?" Mason clawed at the Post-Its again, unsuccessfully.

"No thanks, I'm good—" he grunted as he pushed himself out of his chair with his other arm, still swinging at Rube's hand. Rube held them up above his head, unfazed.

"Sure you're not thirsty?" Mason shook his head, sitting down.

"I just had a drink." And he had, too. Rube nodded, holding the Post-Its within Mason's reach. He plucked them snappishly from Rube's fingers, glanced down at them, and slid them into this shirt pocket. "May I go now?"

Rube kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper, and said in his usual dry tone, "Yes, Fuck-Up. Go out into the cold, unforgiving world."

Mason replied just as dryly as he slid out of his seat, "Alright then, I will."

* * *

He looked down at his Post-Its. _M. Lewis, food court, Towne Centre, 5:23._ And the other: _E. Denny,_ same address.

He scanned the premises; it was the early dinner crowd, and the evening movie crowd, and he didn't know how he was supposed to weed out two people out of the hundreds in his field of vision. _Someone will die alone today. It wasn't T. Nguyen, so it's just karmic destiny for these poor saps._

A large group of children was advancing towards his general direction. They were all young teenage boys, except for one girl, who seemed to be holding her ground as a level for all the male egos and the testosterone running around her. They were talking and laughing, very loudly at that. Groups like them made Mason wish he had had better friends in his childhood. But that was the 40s. This was now.

He almost paid no mind to them, but as they passed him, he heard one boy say to the girl in a mocking tone. "Margaret Catherine Lewis, don't expect me to believe that bullshit for a minute." The girl laughed,

"Jesus Christ, Marco--you sound like my mother." Mason looked down at his Post-It again. _M. Lewis._

_We have a winner,_ Mason thought. His hand brushed her shoulder as she passed, and he watched the familiar rush of white light pulsated down her arm. She looked up at him, kind of disoriented, but she seemed okay that he had only touched her _shoulder._ Mason folded up the Post-It, sliding it into his pocket. _One down._

He smiled to himself at his dumb luck, but his pride and accomplishment only lasted about a second when one young boy ran into him, his hands tucked into his thick ski jacket. He looked kind of greasy and dangerous, but at times so did Mason. "Watch where you're going!" the kid shouted, glaring up at Mason from under his brow.

"I wasn't 'going' anywhere!" The boy seemed a little hesitant, but muttered in a low tone,

"No one messes with Eric Denny."

"Oh, fuck off, punk," Mason said, pushing his shoulder a little, extracting his soul. Instead of a swirling white light, this kid's light looked black and gritty, like the trails of gravelings as they disappear. In all his years of holding this job, Mason had never seen anything quite like it.

The kid walked down towards the theater, gaining speed before breaking into a light jog, then a run, and then a limping sprint as he opened his thick jacket and pulled out two handguns, one for each hand, that obviously weren't his, as they made his hands look weak and clumsy over the shining but scuffed metal.

He held them in the air above his head, firing two warning shots. Mason could only look on as he fired at the mass of people, who ducked and ran, screaming, away from him. And he watched as E. Denny shot a retreating M. Lewis in the back, and she fell sideways to the concrete. Mason sighed. He felt like crying, or yelling out, or something, but after nearly forty years of watching people die, it didn't impact him anymore. He had become numb to it.

E. Denny tried to stick his guns back in his jacket so no one could knock them out of his hands, but a graveling jumped inside his coat; he ended up firing three bullets into his stomach, and he fell down in his tracks.

Everyone had fled the area, completely emptying it, and all that was left was Mason and the two dead. He looked to his left side to find M. Lewis standing beside him. He watched as security officers rushed to her body. Looking down the way to E. Denny's body, he saw E. Denny's soul, crouching beside what was left of him, and looking disappointed. Mason would've said something, but M. Lewis beat him to it.

"You **bastard!**" she shouted, tears filling her eyes. E. Denny looked up. "I had just started high school, you motherfucking redneck! I had so much ahead of me! And now I'm DEAD!" E. Denny stood up, slowly, still unable to believe what he thought of as failure. M. Lewis sniffled and heaved her chest, and then before Mason could stop her she ran at E. Denny, accompanied by a combination of screaming and crying. Before she could reach him, a hole opened up under E. Denny's feet, and he was sucked into his own personal hell. He clawed for the rim as he fell in, but to no avail. M. Lewis stopped at the edge of this hole, and before it closed she spit down into it, crying. It closed up, silencing the screams they both heard from within. "Son of a bitch," she whimpered, staring down at the place where hell used to be. People came out of hiding and rushed to their bodies, sometimes running right through her, and M. Lewis looked on as her friends nudged everyone out of the way and knelt down beside her. She could only watch as her friends' machismos fell to pieces over her remains, and they broke down crying.

She stood there watching them for what seemed like a long time, before finally looking up at Mason. Her eyes were swollen and puffy, but she had a sense of composure about her now.

"Alright," she said, her voice still broken with tears. She wiped her eyes with her arm and turned her back to the commotion. "What next?"

Mason looked around, hoping her lights would show up out of someplace nearby, but it was still just a plain food court. Usually it showed up right away. She was a straggler.

"You're coming to meet my boss," he said, walking towards her slowly. Her eyes widened a little.

"I'm meeting Jesus?"

"Not really, no." She didn't seem convinced.

"Where is he?" Mason rolled his eyes inwardly, at the thought.

"Der Waffel Haus."

She looked confused. "What?"

"I'll explain it to you on the walk. Come on."

* * *

Mason pushed the door open, to find the rest of the Reapers sitting around their usual table. Mason leaned over the partition, looking down at Rube.

"I've got a straggler, Rube." Rube looked up, to see her sitting at the counter, her eyes still pink, and her chest still heaving a little. Rube sighed disapprovingly.

"M. Lewis, I take it?"

"She goes by Molly." Rube leaned back, groaning.

"Mason, not _again_."

"Please, Rube. She's taking her death really hard. It was sudden and untimely and--I mean, just _look at her_."

Rube looked up as she buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth.

George looked over her shoulder. "She's _that_ upset about dying young?"

"She'd just started high school. She had her whole life ahead of her." Rube looked up at him.

"Did she refuse to go into her lights, or did they just not show up all together?"

"They weren't any--"

"What the fuck...?" Roxy suddenly said, interrupting them. They all looked to her, alarmed; she was looking in M. Lewis' direction. "Is Kiffany talking to her?!"

They all turned in their seats. Kiffany was leaning against the counter, comforting her, and offering her a Kleenex; M. Lewis looked sort of startled that someone could see her, and she glanced back at Mason.

"Oh my God," Daisy said. Rube looked back up to Mason skeptically.

"Are you sure she's dead?"

"Of course I'm sure! I took her soul and watched her get shot in the back, and then she just appeared by my side. Typical soul things, you know?"

Rube nodded; then he tapped Roxy's shoulder, and she wordlessly slid out, allowing him to stand up and walk towards the counter. Before he said anything, Kiffany gestured towards M. Lewis with her coffee pot. "Is she with you?" Rube nodded to himself; his suspicions were confirmed.

"She is. Come with me, Molly." She hopped obediently off the barstool, following after Rube. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Thank you, Kiffany," evenly and politely. Kiffany nodded, smiling, and turned back to the register.

"Everyone, this is Molly," Rube said, standing her at the foot of the table. "I suspect that she's undead." They all nodded and muttered incoherent salutations. "She's going to be an animal Reaper I'm guessing, and she's _mostly_ Mason's responsibility," he said, nodding pointedly to Mason. "But I want you all to help her get her footholds, alright?" They nodded again, feeling sort of sorry for her, but not knowing what to do if they said no anyway.

Rube looked back to Mason. "You think you can handle something this big and important, Fuck-Up?"

Mason waved his hand dismissively. "Pssht, of course I can." Rube nodded.

"Okay." He then pointed a finger at him. "But remember, I call you Fuck-Up for a reason."

"I know."

* * *

_**Author's Note:** Should I develop Molly? Review, let me know._


End file.
